A Conversation with Ziv Navoth

AOL sure is in an interesting place these days, they have a brand new CEO (ex Google VP Tim Armstrong), a legacy dial-up access business that more than twenty years after it was launched still makes billions of dollars a year and the rest of AOL split up into three different groups; Platform A which is one of largest advertising networks, Media Glow which includes AOL.com and mega blogs like TMZ and Engadget and the group which most interests me; People Networks which includes AIM, ICQ, Bebo, Yedda, Goowy and the newly acquired SocialThing.

People Networks are now planning an extensive synergy of all these properties (and also 3rd party outside content) under the banner of “life streaming” where users will be able to syndicate all their online activity into one stream.

I was lucky enough yesterday to have a conversation with Ziv Navoth SVP Marketing at People Networks, Ziv is a very interesting guy; at Bebo where he ran marketing, he grew the user base from 22 million to 45 million users and pioneered numerous innovations including a new business model for media companies to distribute and monetize their content and a new form of online entertainment, combining original productions with brand sponsorship. Since the Bebo acquisition his task at AOL is to expand a network already 90+ million strong. See my full conversation with him below.